


Privacy Settings

by cauldron__cakes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Diary/Journal, John Watson's Blog, John is a Mess, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mentioned Mary Morstan, Sherlock is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:32:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8569702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cauldron__cakes/pseuds/cauldron__cakes
Summary: Sherlock finds John's online journal. It's a big deal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a bit of a one-shot...by which I mean I wrote it in one sitting and proofread it like maybe twice, so I apologize for any weird misspellings or weird stuff in general :)

 

_It’s worth noting that privacy is a nicety well beyond Sherlock Holmes’ limits of comprehension. Which is really saying something, considering the seemingly endless capacity of that mind. But in any case, everyone who meets him is aware of this fact almost instantly. Sherlock just doesn’t care to learn the concept. So what is really surprising to me, weeks later, as I look back on the events that followed Sherlock finding the journal, was not the effect it had, though that was indeed a shock, but how long it had taken for Sherlock to read it. Actually, I imagine Sherlock had really refrained from doing so on purpose for quite some time, a thought that only brightens the situation._

  * ••



           “John, I’m using your laptop.” John had been asleep in his chair for at least twenty minutes; there was really no getting a response, but John had said he always had to tell him, especially when he was busy writing. But John wasn’t writing anymore, he was sleeping. No use in getting up and crossing the room to retrieve his own when he can simply reach over and grab the machine sitting in front of him.

            Sherlock had spent the last fifteen minutes watching John’s face, as sleep relaxed the crease between his eyes, his breath slowing, catching every few minutes or so as he shifted. It was late, too late for John to be up, anyway, but Sherlock didn’t sleep much these days. To be fair, he didn’t ever sleep much. But the dreams now, the nightmares…Sherlock did everything he could to stay out of that cell, stay warm. Did everything he could to stay with John, awake. Those months after he was back, when John was gone, when he was with Mary, and Sherlock was alone. That was a dark time, darker than he’d experienced in a long while. Worse than the torture, worse than before John. It was the knowledge that the man he needed more than anything, more than air, was wrapped in the arms of someone else. That he had failed John in every way, and lost him for it.

            Sherlock can’t say he was happy at the utter betrayal of Mary Watson, but he never felt love for that woman. In the dead of night, when the nightmares leave him curled up in his chair in a cold sweat, and John presses a cup of tea into his shaking hands, he can almost admit to himself that he was relieved. And at the glimmer in John’s eyes at Sherlock’s smile when the panic had passed, he could almost convince himself that…but no.

            He grabbed the laptop, and pressed the space bar, watching the screen light up. But despite what he had assumed, the page that appeared was not John’s blog, but an entirely different website. This in it of itself was a surprise; Sherlock had made an assumption, something he almost never even considered doing, and on top of that, his assumption turned out to be false. At first glance, it appeared to be something of a different blog, but at further inspection, he found it was in fact an online journal, and quite an extensive one at that. From his home page, Sherlock could see pages going back as far as four years ago, around the time he had met John. This, he actually had suspected for some time; that John was keeping logs in some other form than the blog. The evidence, in that respect, was all there. He consistently referred to vague events and thoughts in the blog that hadn’t been written about, like he thought they had been. And even John, who typed as slow as a person really could in Sherlock’s opinion, spent considerably too much time typing to only bang out the blogs uploaded to the website. In any case, Sherlock had never tried to find the other blog anywhere, and now he saw why they didn’t come up in a normal search. This website wasn’t really a blog at all, but an entirely personal journal.

          The entries weren’t uniform, like his blog, but seemed to signify important events with entries in all caps, followed by frequent, smaller entries, most of which were labeled ‘stream of consciousness’. At first the entries were input fairly infrequently, with only four or five a month, but as time went on, they seemed to appear several times a week. After Sherlock’s departure, the entries stopped altogether for what looked like six, no eight months. And then almost like magic, they appeared again. Every day for one two three four months, each and every entry labeled ‘Sherlock’. He almost stopped there, closed the computer and deleted the memory from his mind palace. But he was in too far now, and he hadn’t read any of the actual entries, so he continued to look down the list, hands shaking slightly as he approached the date of his return. He reached the time John met Mary. And then they tapered off again, and the major events section seemed to all but disappear for almost a year, most entries labeled ‘stream of conciseness’ or ‘thoughts on’. Two were simply labeled ‘Mary’. And then the journal exploded once again. Some days had more than one entry, and the labels alternated between ‘Sherlock’, ‘Mary’, and things like ‘Fuck it all’. A few had case labels, one was marked ‘wedding’. Three months ago they slowed down again, three or four a week, and the labels went back to normal, mostly; still, at least once a week one was labeled ‘Sherlock’.

          He reached the end of the list, to today’s date, and found it was a ‘Sherlock’ entry. For several minutes, Sherlock sat absolutely still, hand hovering over the keypad, itching to read what John wanted to say about him bad enough to put into words that he knew would never be shared with anyone but himself. With anyone else, literally anyone else in the entire world, he wouldn’t think twice. But all Sherlock could think was how he would feel if John unlocked the room in Sherlock’s mind palace labeled ‘John Watson’, how completely devastating it would be to their friendship if John were to know how badly Sherlock really needed him, how John was the only human Sherlock saw light in. In the end, it was the sad realization that he would find nothing like that here that made Sherlock peak inside John Watson’s brain.

September 26th

            _He’s sitting across from me, curled in his chair as I write today. Even that surprises me sometimes, still. I look up and he’s there and somehow I’m still shocked to see his eyes looking back at me. When I dream he is dead. No, that’s not right. In my nightmares he is dead. When I dream he is with me, always._

Sherlock blinked. It wasn’t even close to what he was expecting, and it was short to boot. Before he could stop himself, he found the last entry labeled ‘Sherlock’, and read it as well.

September 18th

            _We talked about Mary today for the first time since the night I came back. He seemed so, so angry, so held back. Like there was something he wanted to say, needed to say, but he felt he couldn’t. I don’t want that. I don’t want him to feel like he can’t talk to me. I need him to talk to me. That’s incredibly hypocritical of me, isn’t it? As if there isn’t enough I hide from him. As if the very reason I need him to open up to me is what I’m constantly hiding from him. As if I wasn’t…God, what am I even doing?_

The entry ended there. Sherlock huffed, his breathing heavy, hands shaking. Wasn’t WHAT? He was too invested to quit now.

September 9th

            _I think he was hurt when he was gone. I mean, really hurt. He wakes up most nights he sleeps. I hear him cry out, in pain or fear, I don’t know. Last night he said my name, and every part of me, every fiber of my being wanted to go into his room, wanted to hold him, to remind him I’m here, that I’ll always be here, that I never wanted to go. That I wish I never had. I wanted him to know, in that moment, how much he meant to me. Instead I rolled over and stared at the wall for the next two hours, and tried not to think about his head smashing into the pavement._

If Sherlock was feeling the pressure before, it was nothing like now. He didn’t know what to do, couldn’t think at all. In a panic, he scrolled back up to before he’d returned, and skimmed through the entry labels again, looking for something, anything that could clarify what he was seeing, feeling. He found it. There was an entry, just a few weeks after the entries returned following his presumed death, labeled ‘how I know’. Something about it peaked his interest, like a part of him knew it must be significant, buried in a sea of ‘Sherlock’.

January 7th

            _Today on the telly a woman spoke of the grief she experienced after her husband died. She talked about how she loved him. She spoke of what he meant to her, of what he did for her. Saved her, loved her. Of how she would never be the same without him. I wept for Sherlock Holmes. Again. And I found that despite all I’d done to hide it, I was always in love with the world’s only consulting detective. And no matter how long I live without him, I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone in the same way. I can think more clearly now than I’ve been able to in months. I can see myself again. The world is beginning to regain its colour. But I don’t think I will ever experience it in shades quite as bright as when I was the detective’s companion. I never knew anyone’s eyes could shine quite as bright, go quite as dark as his. I never knew that anyone so solid could breathe like the wind. I never thought I could feel whole, could feel adequate in the presence of someone so brilliant. I never knew how easy it was to fail the ones you love. I failed the one person I will ever love with everything I am. Tonight I find myself mourning him all over again, this time in shades of scarlet and purple, instead of the endless night. Tonight I find myself falling in love with a dead man._

January 8th

            _Tonight I want nothing more than to be a dead man._

January 9th

               _Tomorrow I may be a dead man._

January 10th

              _Please God just let me die._

Sherlock found tears had reached his chin, and wondered why they felt like fire on his cheeks. There was a rock in his chest, building up and up, trying to crush his lungs, his heart. It was going to tear him apart. John believed he had failed him, had wanted to end his own life because of it. John Watson felt responsible for Sherlock’s death; that knowledge alone was enough for Sherlock to break. But there was something else as well, something threatening to light a fire in his chest filling with pain. _I was always in love with the world’s only consulting detective._ John Watson said he was in love with him. At one point, at least, John loved him. Really, truly loved him.

            Sherlock was falling apart, in anguish and in fear and in complete heartbreak. So it was no wonder he didn’t notice John had woken up. It was only John’s voice that brought Sherlock out of his own mind.

            “Sh-sherlock?” His voice barely rang above a whisper. By then it was too late to dry the tears, to stop the tremor still present in his hands. All he could do was look up, and hope against all hope John did not know what he had seen.

            No such luck.

            “Sherlock what are you reading?” John’s voice shook, fear written in every line of his face.

            “Oh, nothing,” Sherlock croaked, and even to him it sounded so false all he could do was shut his eyes to it all. With one motion, John rose and grabbed the laptop from Sherlock’s lap. With one glance, his face broke. Not just into anger or anguish, but real actual horror, lined in dark brushes of grief. He paled, and sank back into the chair, dropping the laptop to the floor. For one horrible, gut wrenching moment, there was silence. And then John let out a noise that was for all intents and purposes, entirely inhuman. He got up out of the chair and started pacing, back and forth across the room, mumbling a string of words that really only Sherlock could have made sense of.

            “God no fuck I didn’t he can’t I don’t know how to and now and how was I so stupid I can’t no he doesn’t how can I…I have to leave God how is this happening stupid stupid fucking stupid fuck fuck fuck fu-” Sherlock caught his shoulder, and whirled John around to face him.

            “John, you- “

            “No, no I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry, God I’m so sorry you were never supposed to- “

            “John, I-” But John was in full panic now, his face grey, and without warning, his knees buckled underneath him. Sherlock caught the doctor just in time to save his knees from crashing into the floor, and led him with all the grace he could muster to the chair. John leaned back and closed his eyes, clearly holding back tears.

            “John, listen to me,” Sherlock croaked, kneeling in front of him. “What you wrote…I shouldn’t have read it. But-” he breathed in, hard, trying desperately to stay, to think, fighting the urge to run. “John, if you thought for a moment that you, that you failed me?” His throat closed at that moment, a surge of emotion most wouldn’t think him capable of taking over. John opened his eyes, looked down at Sherlock. He grimaced, shook his head.

            “I never stopped, Sherlock. God, I’m so sorry. I should have been better. I should have seen. I should have- “

            “I love you.”

            John stopped dead.

            “Y-you?”

            “From the day I laid eyes on you. From the moment you handed me your phone. But even more from the night you chased after me into London. And even more the night you shot a man for me. And then more so at the pool, and more and more every day, every single goddamn day I have known you I have loved you more than the day before…John.”  

            “B-but you…Sherlock if you’re fucking with me…”

             Carefully, Sherlock let his hands come to rest on John’s knee, and shifted up, his face inches from John’s.

            “I never know when you’re lying,” John whispered, his face flushed with colour, eyes sparkling brighter than Sherlock had seen them in months.

            “Trust me, please.” Sherlock’s voice didn’t so much break as crumbled under the weight of the word. More than love, more than passion, please was a word saved for only the utmost importance. Please held gravity.

            It was John who crossed the distance.

            _Yes._


End file.
